Poetry Friday: Postcard Project Finale

It’s Poetry Friday. Today, we bid a fond “see you later, alligator” to the 44 Postcard Project. 

From "The Postcard Age: Selections from
the Leonard A. Lauder Collection"

I’m checking in from the AWP Conference in Boston. When I arrived on Wednesday, the first thing I did was hoof it to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to check out an exhibit of vintage postcards.

While I was looking at a postcard from Skegness, England – the beach town where my family used to vacation – a woman in the gallery struck up a conversation.

My grandparents once owned a home in Skegness.
From "The Postcard Age"

She turned out to know the owner of the vintage postcard collection, Leonard K. Lauder (as in Estee). I told her about my poetry postcard project and she had some insights into the exhibit. Fascinating!

How am I feeling, now that I’ve completed all 44 postcard poems? Like this:

The Task at Hand

If I attacked
each daily chore
with Wonder Woman’s

musculature,

jetting, red-heeled

here to there
in blue, starry

underwear,

I would deserve

a gold tiara

and bullet-

stopping cuffs.
I would crush tasks

in my able hands

and wonder

have I done

enough.

Laura Shovan

Postcard Information:

Sensation Comics No. 26

February 1944 │ Artist: Harry G. Peter

© DC Comics

From The Art of Vintage DC Comics: 100 Postcards, published by Chronicle Books. © 2010 DC Comics.

Yesterday, my poetry card was full at the AWP Conference. I attended a session about the Afghan Women Writing Project. Talk about Wonder Women -- they are super poets and super brave. (They are looking for mentors. Find out more here.)

Later in the day, I went to a panel on verse novels, which included Rita Dove. Her Sonata Mulattica has been on my to-read list for several years, since Dove spoke about it on the Diane Rehm Show.

This verse novel by Dove is about violinist
George Bridgetower, a contemporary and
friend of Beethoven.

The Thursday evening keynote was poets Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott.

I’m going to have to wrap up the postcard project when things are a little calmer. Next week, I’ll post a cheat sheet, listing the poems in groups based on their themes, as well as providing links to each of the poems by number.

For now, here’s some data on where the 44 postcard poems traveled:

From "The Postcard Age"

Twelve states: California (3 cards), Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland (28 cards), Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

And three countries: China, Italy and Scotland.

Am I ready to quit? Not 100%. I plan to continue writing postcard poems, but will shift to one or two a week for the rest of 2013.

Postcards have worked their hypnotic effect on me.

Today’s Poetry Friday host is my dear pal Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe. Stop by and leave a little greeting, or a link to your poetry post.